The European Commission is being taken to court for overreaching its authority by issuing a directive banning HTP.
The European Commission's (EC) attempt to restrict the sale of heated tobacco products (HTP) will be referred to the European Court of Justice by the Irish High Court, according to the EU Reporter.
PJ Carroll & Company and Nicoventures Trading, two companies that market and sell HTP in Ireland, filed the lawsuit. They challenged the Irish State for enacting an EC directive, arguing that EC had exceeded the authority granted to it by the Tobacco Products legislation passed by the EU's legislative bodies, the Council and the Parliament.
It is now certain that the Dublin court will refer the case to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, and attorneys for both sides are being asked to agree on the issues that the Court will decide. These are issues that EC will also have to address in order to justify its decision to expand the scope of its delegated authority to include products that were once exempt from regulation.
According to Mr. Justice Cian Ferriter's ruling, there are strong arguments for invalidating EC's directive. It would result in the complete ban of flavored HTP, including glo, the product at the center of the legal dispute.
In their lawsuit, the companies argued that EC was invalidly making a political choice to ban it. This argument, according to the judge, meant that EC had essentially banned "a category of tobacco product which was new on the market, which had not been in existence at the time of the enactment of the Tobacco Products Directive in 2014, and which had not been the subject of separate policy and health assessments."
Mr. Justice Ferriter ruled that “it is at least arguable that this involved a political choice which was only open to the EU legislature and not to [EC]”. As a result, the case will be referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union. In addition, he asks that the Luxembourg court rule on EC's methodology since it acted because of increased sales of HTP but failed to account for the fact that HTP contain less tobacco than cigarettes.